


sleep paralysis

by copperiisulfate



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: ?????, Bondage, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 06:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10916544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: some people have far simpler fantasies





	1. it's in the water, baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (surreal dream bondage fic doesn't follow the rules of the real world, including capitalization)

“ _tighter_ ,” seiji says, terse. 

he is seated before natori, who _was_ previously inspecting his handiwork but now gives him a _look_ from above his glasses. it could almost go on to be a roll of the eyes but he stops just short.

his fingers nonetheless brush seiji’s knuckles on their way to his wrists and the paper charm that binds them. natori obliges, makes a motion with a flick of his own wrist, and seiji feels the sting of the paper cutting into his skin, stronger than any rope.

“good,” says seiji, trailing the shadowy salamander with his eyes as it darts across the bridge of natori’s nose and then settles on his jaw, tail waving from below his ear to the corner of his mouth.

“how much time do you want me to give you?” natori asks this, dully, sounding further away than he is, especially given that he is not far away at all.

seiji feels, suddenly, a little lightheaded, can barely feel the tips of his fingers.

he knows that he is not getting out of this, not with how tight natori has tied it, stronger than the bind of any yokai magic.

 _you could burn down my house right now and i couldn’t–wouldn’t be able to stop you,_ seiji thinks faintly. _i might even let you_. 

_in a way, i already am._

some people have far simpler fantasies.

“fifty seconds tops,” seiji says.

“i hate doing this,” natori’s frown deepens. “every time.” 

“no you don’t,” seiji smirks. 

natori lifts seiji’s chin with his index finger, says, “you have thirty seconds.”

ten seconds in and he’s fighting it, straining against the hold.

fifteen seconds, and natori whispers close to his ear, “ _let me help you._ ”

twenty-five, and he repeats the same thing, a breath away from seiji’s lips, the desperation in it running deep.

seiji wakes up alone in his darkened room before they ever make it to thirty.


	2. it's between you and me

the dreams don’t get any better. whether or not they get worse is debatable.

seiji has known for some time that this is the one thing that could destroy everything. and so, of course, he can never entertain it in the waking hours.  
  
in this hazy world however, when he’s face down and bathed in oblivion, it is something else altogether.

absently, there’s the variation of a recurring thought:  _you could burn down my house and i would let you._  
  
but thoughts, as he should have learned by now, are hardly private in this space.

“would you let me?” natori whispers it in between seiji’s shoulder blades, gathers seiji’s hair in a gentle fist and holds it against the pillow at a spot beside his head and trails his lips up to seiji’s nape.

the answer is in the arch of seiji’s spine, the curve of his neck, the way he leans into the touch, the heat, infernal.

natori’s hands are elsewhere, everywhere, pads of his fingers grazing over pulse points–critical vessels and vital organs, thinks seiji hazily, and they’re deft like he’s done this a thousand times over–like seiji has let him. 

he has never known it was possible to flirt with danger this hard but danger has been flirting back, found its way into his bed and has worked out all the meticulous ways to steal his breath in every sense of the word.  
  
“tell me what you want,” he mouths, lower now, against the midst of seiji’s spine, so soft that its searing and suddenly unbearable.  
  
surely, this must be a trick in seven separate realities, meant to disarm, then bleed him dry.  
  
“are you so practiced in your paranoia,” says natori, a little music in it, “that you still can’t utter the word?”   
  
seiji turns too quick, knocks him off balance, but he recovers quick, returns to hover above once again, bracing himself by arms above seiji’s shoulders and knees beside his hips.  
  
seiji lurches up and crashes against him, if only to make him stop asking nonsensical, intolerable questions, to make him stop reading his damned mind. 

it’s anything but clean, hands tugging at hair, lips between teeth, but then he is–yet again–quick to recover. 

he’s got seiji’s wrists locked in his hands, pinned overhead. 

seiji wants so much to not be thrilled by it.  
  
“i asked you a question,” he hisses, quiet yet sharp. his eyes are alight with an unrecognizable sort of fire.  
  
the spectacles do him such disservice, seiji thinks. 

in another dream, seiji will crush them in his hands, the way he is crushing seiji’s wrists. there are probably several dozen meanings behind that and only one of them being something about turnabout being fair play.

well, neither of them has ever played fair. perhaps, this is why it has gone on as long as it has.  
  
_i want you–_ thinks seiji, even as it is transparent in the air once again, as he shifts and slides the limbs that he can, and drags natori back down flush against himself using his legs as leverage _–to get out of my head._  
  
he can feel natori grin against his mouth this time. it’s surprising that he isn’t laughing outright at all the lies and contradictions. seiji’s well aware that he’s doing all the wrong things and his body belies him besides.  
  
natori’s grip around his wrists loosens and seiji’s reaction time is sluggish because he could have overtaken him in that split-second but now, the moment feels lost. natori has their fingers laced together, pinning seiji’s hands at either side of his head.  
  
“holding hands now, are we? didn’t realize we were resorting to making _love,_ ” and he grinds out that last word with an especially impressive show of scorn.  
  
natori grins, and it’s his movie-star grin but there is something of a cruel twist in it. “did you think i was easy just because you’ve seen me on tv? a little romance will get you a long way.” his lines sound practiced but no less catty in their delivery. seiji wants to groan. he could break the hold easily now, shove him off, be done with this whole charade.

“and seiji,” natori says, sounding somewhere between overly saccharine and vaguely sincere, impossible to read really, but it’s likely just the sound of his name that throws him off, “we’re doing whatever your deep, dark, dirty subconscious wants us to be doing.”  
  
this silences seiji for a moment. by all logic, once the fourth-wall is broken, he should wake up. 

instead, he feels paralyzed. he can hardly move even when natori lets one of his hands go completely and moves to tuck a strand of seiji’s hair behind his ears.

his touch turns warm, turns gentle and secure and–

“tell me to stop,” he murmurs, almost apologetic. “tell me to leave and mean it when you say it and i will go and never return.”

seiji wants to laugh because he does not know how to say that somehow the thought of  _that_ is far more unbearable.

distantly, the same old refrain:

 _you’re going to burn down my house, roots to branches of my family tree, leave nothing but ashes of my legacy, and i’m going to let you, aren’t i?_  
  
natori reads this too, as always, and looks at him at length, seeming suddenly and surprisingly wistful.  “is that what you want?” 

the paralysis, after all, is only a trick of the mind when it comes down to it. he can speak and he can move but it’s easier not to.

“what do you _want_ , seiji? what do _you_ want?”

and seiji overcomes the inertia, moves to kiss him, to silence him before this becomes even more insufferable than it is (to silence himself).

even here, even after everything, he cannot say it. 

no, he cannot even bring himself to put words to the thought.

**Author's Note:**

> at this rate: i'm basically going to go to my grave profusely apologizing to midorikawa yuki.
> 
> chapter titles are borrowed lyrics from placebo's _post blue_


End file.
